Exploring New Flavor

I always see people use balsamic to mix salad or other cooking
so I bought one bottle to use it for cooking.
Mostly I make sure I know the taste of the ingredients b4 I use them for cooking,
so as usual, I tasted the balsamic vinegar.
Surprisingly, the Balsamic Vinegar tastes like....Chinese Black vinegar....haha

Balsamic vinegar is an aged reduction of white sweet grapes (Trebbiano for red and Spergola for white sauvignon) that are boiled to a syrup. The grapes are cooked very slowly in copper cauldrons over an open flame until the water content is reduced by over 50%. The resulting "must" is placed into wooden barrels and an older balsamic vinegar is added to assist in the acetification. Each year the vinegar is transferred to different wood barrels so that the vinegar can obtain some of the flavors of the different woods. The only approved woods are oak, cherry, chestnut, mulberry, a cacia, juniper, and ash. The age of the vinegar is divided into young – from 3 to 5 years maturation; middle aged 6 to 12 years and the highly prized very old which is at least 12 years and up to 150 years old. It can be cost up to $500 per bottle.